Good morning and welcome to Friday. Pro-tip for this morning’s playlist: Kenny Loggins. There’s nothing quite like a spirited rendition of “Highway to the Danger Zone” while sitting in traffic (or your work-from-home pj’s).

P.S. Have a great Memorial Day weekend. We'll be off on Monday, see you back here Tuesday.😎

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.40 minutes to read.

"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook."

–William James (1842-1910)

The leading cause of death among American children is now guns, according to new CDC data published last week, days before the school shooting in Uvalde, TX, that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers.

🔢 By the numbers: Nearly two-thirds of the 4,368 US youths killed by guns in 2020 were homicide victims, while 30% of the fatalities were suicides.

• The Uvalde tragedy was the 212th mass shooting in the US so far this year, per the Gun Violence Archive, which defines the term as four or more people shot or killed (not including the shooter). Under that definition, there were 693 mass shootings in the US last year, 611 the previous year, and 417 in 2019.
• In terms of school shootings, Uvalde was the 27th such incident with injuries or deaths so far in 2022; the previous four years saw an average of 23 school shootings, including ten in the first year of the pandemic.
• The US has more firearms per capita than any other country, with 120.5 guns per 100 people according to the latest data. That’s up from 88 per 100 in 2011, and more than double second place Yemen (52.8 per 100 people).

🏛️ On Capitol Hill… Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said yesterday that the chamber will hold a vote on two House-passed bills to expand background checks for gun purchases when lawmakers return from recess next month, though neither is expected to pass amidst GOP opposition.

• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told CNN yesterday that he directed Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to work with Democratic lawmakers on a "bipartisan solution" to gun violence.

Several organizations, including the Indy 500, University of Nebraska’s football team and the National Weather Service, have announced plans over the past month to suspend balloon launches in response to a global helium shortage.

🌎 What’s going on?... Only a handful of countries have the capacity to produce helium, which is a byproduct of natural gas. The current shortage can be attributed in part to supply-chain snarls in Russia, which was expected to provide ⅓ of the world's helium… and then sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine limited exports.

• The US federal government, which produces 40% of the world’s helium, has also experienced recent delays in auctioning off its assets to private companies; the next sale isn’t expected to occur until September.
• Of the world’s five major helium suppliers, all but one have declared force majeure and are now rationing customers to 45–60% of their contracted amounts, according to industry consultant Phil Kornbluth.

🎈 The potential impact: About 30% of the world's helium supply is used to make MRI scanners, while another 20% goes into the manufacture of hard disks and semiconductors. Helium is also used in airbags, cryogenics, weather balloons, party balloons, rocket fuel and deep-sea diving.

​​Mysterious mounds in the Amazon rainforest were once the site of ancient urban settlements featuring pyramids as tall as eight-story buildings, per newly published peer-reviewed research that used lidar remote-sensing technology to map the terrain from the air.

• “This is the first clear evidence that there were urban societies in this part of the Amazon Basin,” Jonas Gregorio de Souza, an archaeologist at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, told Nature.

🧠 In the know: The study adds to a growing amount of research indicating the Amazon – long thought to have been pristine and lightly inhabited wilderness before the arrival of Europeans – was home to advanced societies well before that.

In the book America Before, author/journalist Graham Hancock recounts the 16th century travels of Spanish monk Gaspar de Carvajal, who, along with a group of conquistadors, explored the entire Amazon River system from East to West and delivered the earliest recorded eyewitness account of the region.

He described unpopulated forest regions interspersed with heavily populated empires and sprawling cities, some the size of Manhattan, abutting the Amazon River.

Many years later, returning explorers discovered nothing matching the splendor of his account… this damaged Carvajal’s credibility, and thus his writings were dismissed as fiction for hundreds of years. But according to evidence laid out in the book, the Amazonian population could’ve been decimated by one or more catastrophes (disease, famine, etc.), then much of the settlements subsequently swallowed up by the jungle.

It's time for the Black Owned Brands Box from Good Food Brands in commemoration of Juneteenth.🥳🎈

The Black-Owned Brand Box is packed with delicious goodies including:

• A Dozen Cousins - Heat-and-Eat Cuban Black Beans
• Partake Foods - Chocolate Chip Crunchy Cookies
• Pipcorn - Truffle Heirloom Popcorn
• Symphony - Balsamic Seasoned Potato Chips
• Asami - Mozambique African Black Tea Bags
• Do Well - Strawberry Basil Craft Mixing Syrup

And shipping is free! 🙌

🍽️ Good Food Brands... is a Black-owned company that wants to give awareness and exposure to minority-owned brands, especially with our country is in the middle of a social justice crisis. They've been featured in Food Network Magazine and VegNews, among others.

You can subscribe to their monthly boxes that feature brands from different communities, or mix and match individual items and make your own! Every company featured in Good Food Brands is a small business with big dreams and in need of your support.😊

Businesses can also curate their own boxes to gift to employees for heritage days and months.🏢🎉

➡️ Support small businesses and try amazing new snacks today with Good Food Brands!

🏙️ The Southern and Western US contained all of the top 15 fastest-growing cities or towns during the year that ended July 1, 2021, according to new Census Bureau data published Thursday.

• Arizona had five locations among the 15 fastest-growing cities or towns with a population above 50,000, while Texas, Florida and Idaho each had three; when it came to overall numeric increase in residents, over half of the top 15 towns were located in Texas.
• San Francisco saw the largest rate of decline, losing 6.3% of its population, or almost 55,000 residents. Its population, along with Chicago, has fallen to levels not seen since 2010.
• The top 15 largest cities remained the same as in 2020, though more than half experienced population decline. In the nine cities with more than one million people, the collective population fell by 419,000.
• Despite losing 3.5% of residents, NYC remained America’s largest city. Its July 1 population of 8.5 million was more than twice that of second place LA, with nearly 4 million.

• ☝️ You would not believe your eyes: You’re looking at billions of fireflies in long-exposure photographs of the Anamalai Tiger Reserve in western Tamil Nadu, India.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📈 US stocks rose across the board yesterday, as the Dow notched its fifth straight day of gains. (Dow: +1.6% | S&P: +2.0% | Nasdaq: +2.7%)
• 🏘️ The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell for the second straight week to 5.10%, per Freddie Mac; rates peaked at 5.30% earlier this month, the highest level since 2009.
• 💰 Broadcom, a semiconductor and software company, agreed to buy cloud computing firm VMware for $61 billion; it’s the second-largest acquisition announced this year and one of the biggest tech acquisitions ever. (Background from the DONUT)

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🎭 Ray Liotta, best known for starring in Goodfellas, passed away in his sleep overnight Wednesday in the Dominican Republic; he was 67.
• 🇬🇧⚖️ Kevin Spacey was charged with four counts of sexual assault against three men in the UK yesterday.
• 🏄 German surfer Sebastian Steudtner set the Guinness World Record for largest wave ever surfed, at 86 feet tall.
• ​​🍿 Highway to the movie theater: Top Gun: Maverick hits theaters today.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🚀🌎 Boeing’s Starliner capsule returned to Earth late Wednesday after spending just under a week docked with the ISS; the successful unmanned test paves the way for Boeing to fly NASA astronauts to and from the space station, perhaps by year's end.
• 🧬 The UK’s Chester Zoo is cryogenically freezing the DNA of rare animals in case they go extinct.
• ⚛️ Scientists have demonstrated the ability to teleport quantum information across points in a network not physically connected to each other for the first time, according to new peer-reviewed research.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 📕⚖️ A woman who wrote a romance novel titled "How to Murder Your Husband" was convicted of murdering her husband by a jury in Oregon yesterday.
• 🐶 Move over, TobyKeith: Yesterday the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed that the world’s oldest living dog isn’t the 21-year-old Chihuahua TobyKeith, but rather a 22-year-old Toy Fox Terrier named Pebbles.
• 🗳️ Pennsylvania began a recount of its hotly-contested GOP Senate primary, where Dr. Mehmet Oz leads former hedge fund CEO David McCormick by just 910 votes. (From the Left | From the Right)

💬 Quoted… “I’m not Banksy!”

• A UK town councilor resigned from his position this week, blaming people who falsely accused him of being the mysterious street artist for “undermining my ability to do the work.”

🇨🇳 Stat of the Day: Just 8% of Manhattan office workers were on-site five days a week in mid-April, according to new data from the Partnership for New York City.

🤯 Did You Know?... Possums don’t actually “play” dead, but rather go into shock and pass out involuntarily due to fear of predators. They remain in a catatonic state without feeling any pain or having any reflexes until waking up.

📖 Worth a Read: The Colorful History of the World's First Gummy Bears → (Smithsonian Magazine)

DONUT HQ is located in the city of Austin, which has a motto: “Keep Austin Weird.” In celebration of that sentiment, we bring you the most unusual, off-the-wall and occasionally laugh-out-loud headlines from this week…

1. Two arrested in Louisiana for illegally transporting house, abandoning it in road → (CDL Life)
2. Pool noodle fight over the name Josh again attracts hundreds → (US News & World Report)
3. Occult club registration rejected after complaint it may summon Satan to university → (ABC News Australia)
4. Finland brewery launches NATO beer with 'taste of security' → (AP News)

Wrinkle the Duck loves running. So much, in fact, that her owners designed custom webbed running shoes (☝️). 

• The duck made waves last year when she was spotted running along the track during the NYC marathon. She claimed an official spot this year, running the children's 1K at the Long Island Marathon earlier this month. 

🏆🦆 Waddling to victory... Wrinkle crossed the finish line in 18 minutes and eight seconds, which might be a duck world record, according to Running Magazine.😉

• See Wrinkle in action here. 

Below are three lists of ingredients. All you have to do is give us the completed dish they make. Easy peasy! (The rules, at least.)

☝️ Recipe #1:

• Dough
• Pesto
• Tomatoes
• Green bell pepper
• Black olives
• Red onion
• Artichoke hearts
• Feta cheese

✌️ Recipe #2:

• Butter
• Onion
• Carrots
• Celery
• Garlic
• Stock
• Bay leaves
• Salt and pepper
• Chicken breasts
• Noodles
• Parsley
• Dill
• Lemon juice

3️⃣ Recipe #3:

• Milk
• Short grain rice
• Salt
• Egg
• Brown sugar
• Vanilla extract
• Cinnamon
• Raisins

(keep scrolling for the answers)

👆 Check out the referral prizes you can get just for introducing people you know to little old us. 

What to do: Copy your unique link below, then send it to anyone you think would like the DONUT.

☝️ Recipe #1: Pesto pizza

✌️ Recipe #2: Chicken noodle soup

3️⃣ Recipe #3: Rice pudding